Economist Rajiv Kumar was on Saturday named as the new vice-chairman of NITI Aayog, five days after the incumbent Arvind Panagariya announced that he would quit returning to academics. The government also appointed Vinod Paul, a pediatrician at AIIMS, as a member of the NITI Aayog, an official spokesman said. Kumar, who holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford and a PhD from Lucknow University, is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR). Earlier, he was secretary-general of FICCI and had also served as director and chief executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.